3. Chronicle of the semi-official debate

Both parties met on 1 December and 4 December 1990, and they agreed to submit and confront historical material supporting their respective viewpoints. On 23 December, the VHP and the BMAC submitted their respective bundles of evidence, On 10 January 1991, both sides submitted rejoinders to their opponents' evidence bundles. At least, the VHP scholars gave a detailed reply to all the documents presented by the BMAC. But the latter merely handed in yet another pile of newspaper articles and more such non-evidential statements of opinion. This created the impression that the BMAC was effectively conceding defeat.

On January 24, the parties met in order to discuss the evidence. But the BMAC team leader, Prof. R. S. Sharma, a well-known Marxist historian, said that he and his colleagues had not yet studied the VHP material (to which the BMAC had agreed to reply by January 10). This is most remarkable, because the week before, he had led 42 academics in signing a much-publicized statement staying, that there was definitely absolutely no proof whatsoever at all for the pre-existing Rama temple. He had issued more statements on the matter and even published a small book on it.[9] There he was, pleading a lack of familiarity with the very material on which he had been making such tall statements.

The other historians for the BMAC were Athar Ali, D. N. Jha and Suraj Bhan, apart from the office bearers of the BMAC itself. The four BMAC historians have published their argumentation some months later: Ramajanmabhumi Baburi Masjid, A Historians' Report to the Nation. Tellingly, they do not mention the outcome of the debate, but reiterate the ludicrous demand they made while attending the debate as BMAC advocates, viz. that they be considered "independent historians" qualified to pronounce scientific judgment in a debate between their employers and their enemies.[10]

Of course the government representative dismissed this demand as ridiculous. Yet, the BMAC has continued to call them "independent historians", and they themselves have continued to demand that the VHP submit its case to "independent arbitration", i.e., by their own kind. These two telling details of the Ayodhya debate story have, of course, been withheld from the reader in the booklet published by the anti-temple party.

The next meeting was scheduled for the next day, January 25. But there, the BMAC scholars simply did not show up. The unambiguous result of the debate was this: The BMAC scholars have run away from the arena. They had not presented written evidence worth the name, they had not given a written refutation of the VHP scholars' arguments, they had wriggled out of a face-to-face discussion on the accumulated evidence, and finally they had just stayed away. Thus ended the first attempt by the Government of India to find an amicable solution on the basis of genuine historical facts.

In October 1992, the Narasimha Rao Government tried to revive this discussion foru. Dur to personal differences, Prof. R. S. Sharma stayed away from the BMAC team, which otherwise consisted of the same people. The debate focused almost entirely on the interpretation of the archaeological findings of June 1992: a large number if Hindu sculptures and other temple remains, found in the terrain in front of the disputed building. The BMAC team argued that these findings had all been planted. It also demanded that in view of the ongoing negotiations, the VHP cancel its programme scheduled for 6 December 1992 in Ayodhya. When the VHP refused, the BMAC stayed away from the talks once more.

4. The pro-Temple Evidence

On Ayodhya, there has always in living memory been a consensus: among local Muslims and Hindus, among European travelers and British administrators. As late as 1989, the Encyclopedia Brittannica (entry Ayodhya) reports without a trace of hesitation that the Babri Masjid was built in forcible replacement of a temple marking Rama's birthplace. When there is such a consensus on a given issue, the academic custom is not to reopen the debate until someone comes with serious evidence that the consensus opinion is wrong and that a different scenario is indicated by newfound (or newly interpreted) facts. But the only evidence to surface during the debate was presented by the VHP-mandated team and merely reconfirmed the old consensus.

The VHP's evidence bundle was not just a pile of separate documents.[11] It was centered around a careful argumentation, which can be summed up in three points:

1)     A single hypothesis. Only one hypothesis is put forward, viz. that the disputed place was traditionally (since before the Muslim period) venerated as Rama's birthplace, that a Rama temple had stood on it, and that this temple was destroyed to make way for the Babri Masjid. All the material collected goes to confirm this one hypothesis. Not a single piece of documentary or archaeological evidence contradicts it. The contrast with the anti-Janmabhumi polemists is striking: they have so far not produced any document that positively indicates a different scenario from the one upheld by the VHP scholars. The BMAC effort has been only negative, viz. trying to pick holes in the pro-temple evidence, but the VHP has posited its own hyupothesis that takes care of all the relevant data.

2)     Temple foundations. Archaeological findings in Prof. B. B. Lal's excavation campaign Archaeology of the Ramayana Sites 1975-80 and more recent ones as well as a large number of documents written in tempore non suspecto confirm the hypothesis. Findings of burnt-brick pillar bases dated to the 11^th century in trenches a few metres from the disputed structure prove that a pillared building stood in alignment with, and on the same foundations system as the Banri Masjid. The written documents do not include an eye-witness account of the temple destruction, the way we have eye-witness accounts of the destruction of many other temples. But then, a wealth of documents by European travelers and by local Muslims, confirm unambiguously that the Babri Masjid was considered to have been built in forcible replacement of a Rama temple. These witnesses also describe first-hand how the place was revered by the Hindus as Rama's birthsite, and that Hindus always came back to worship as closely as possible to the original temple site: they could not reasonably have done this except in continuation of a tradition dating back to before the Babri Masjid.

3)     The single hypothesis is consistent with known patterns. No ad hoc hypothesis are needed to support the main hypothesis, no unusual scenarios have to be invented, no unusual motives have to be attributed to the people involved, no conspiracy theory has to be conjured up. The general VHP hypothesis merely says that well-established general patterns of Hindu and Muslim behavior apply to the specific case under consideration. Among these are to be noted:

First, the fact that a temple stood on the now-disputed site, which is a hilltop overlooking Ayodhya, is in perfect conformity with a world-wide practice of putting important buildings, like castles and temples, on the topographical place of honor. By contrast, the hypothesis that the Babri Masjid has been built on an emplty spot presupposes an abnormal course of events, viz. that the people of the temple city Ayodhya had left the place of honor empty.

Second, the demolition of Hindu temples and their forcible replacement by mosques has been a very persistent behavior pattern of the Muslim conquerors. These temple demolitions were consistent with the persecution of "unbelief" carried out by Islamic rulers from Mohammed bin Qasim (who conquered Sindh in 712) to Aurangzeb (the last great Moghul. D. 1707), and more recently in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir. Though there is no lack of negationists who try to deny or conceal it, the historical record bears out Will Durant's assessment that "the Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history".[12] It is safe to affirm that the majority of pre-1707 mosques in India has been built in forcible replacement of Hindu temples. Outside India the Islamic takeover of the most sacred sites of other religions was equally systematic, e.g., the Ka'aba in Mecca, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Aya Sophia in Istanbul, the Buddhist monastery in Bukhara etc.

Third, the fact that Hindu temple materials (14 black stone sculptured pillars) have been used in the Babri Masjid is not an unusual feature requiring a special explanation; on the contrary, it was fairly common practice meant as a visual display of the victory of Islam over infidelity. It was done in many mosques that have forcibly replaced temples, e.g., the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi (in which a part of the Kashi Vishvanath temple is still visible)[13], and the Adahi-Din-ka-Jhonpra mosque in Ajmer, the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi, or, outside India, the Jama Masjid of Damascus (which was a Christian cathedral).

Fourth, the fact that Hindus used to keep on revering sacred sites even after mosques had been built on them, is attested by foreigners like Niccolo Manucci in the 17^th and Alexander Cunningham in the 19^th century.[14] By contrast, the hypothesis that Hindus started laying an arbitrary claim on a place firmly occupied by the Muslims (so that they courted repression for no reason at all), is pretty fantastic and without parallel.